Quote:
Originally Posted by pdurrant
The extra day inserted into a leap year is actually February 24th. The old 24th of February becomes the 25th, etc, with 28th February become the 29th February.
This is because Julius Caeser's calendar reform (which is still the basis (with a minor tweak) of our current calendar) said that in leap years the "6th day before Kalendae of March" should be doubled. That is to say, there should be an extra February 24th. This matched the position of the leap month, Intercalaris, of the pre-Julian Roman calendar.
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Didn't Pope Gregory add in some more changes later as well? Prior to Julius Dec. was the 10th month as well I think. In fact Dec. is the start of words like Decimal (as in decimal system) which is our base 10 number system.